Chinese domestic airliner crashes

Rescue officials say all aboard feared dead

JOHN LEICESTERAssociated Press

Published Wednesday, May 08, 2002

BEIJING -- A Chinese airliner with 112 people aboard crashed Tuesday night into the water off northeastern China after the captain reported a fire in the cabin, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said more than 60 bodies were found and that there was little chance anyone survived.

A witness said the plane, its lights darkened, circled several times before going down.

More than 30 rescue ships were reported headed toward the site of the crash -- the second in a month involving a Chinese passenger airliner -- but darkness was hampering efforts to find more bodies.

"It is estimated that there is little possibility of any people surviving in the accident," Xinhua said.

The China Northern Airlines jet crashed in the bay just off Dalian (pronounced DAH-lee-ehn), a port city on the northeastern coast, 280 miles east of Beijing, Xinhua said. The agency said the plane went into Dalian Bay at about 9:40 p.m. after the captain reported a cabin fire.

The plane, identified as China Northern Flight 6136, was an MD-82 airliner, Xinhua said, and was carrying 103 passengers and nine crew from Beijing, the Chinese capital, to Dalian, in China's Liaoning province, Xinhua said.

It took off at 8:37 p.m., and air traffic controllers lost contact with the flight at less than an hour later, at 9:32 p.m. about 12 miles from Dalian's airport, Xinhua said.

Xinhua said more than 60 bodies had been found; the Web site of the official Communist Party newspaper People's Daily said 64 had been recovered. Local police reported they had begun DNA testing to identify victims

Eight foreigners were reported aboard, including passengers from Japan and South Korea, Xinhua said, adding that most of the passengers were residents of Dalian, which faces the sea on three sides.

An official at China Northern Airlines said police had sealed off the scene.

She asserted, without giving details, that the plane's landing was controlled. "The fuselage is intact," the official said, refusing to give her name. "The pilot was in control."

But an emergency services officer at the airport, who said he had just returned from the crash site, said the plane was broken into pieces, which were floating on the water.

"It disintegrated," the officer said. He refused to give his name or other details, saying information about the crash would be released in three days.

Liu Jiqing, a loader at Dalian Port who was on duty Tuesday night, told Xinhua he saw the plane "making several circles before plunging into the sea." Liu, who called the crash in to his dispatcher, said there was no light on the plane when it came down.

The accident came at the end of China's weeklong labor day holiday, a time when millions of Chinese travel within the country, suggesting some of those aboard may have been returning home for the resumption of business on Wednesday.

China's cabinet, the State Council, sent a special investigative team to Dalian early Wednesday, Xinhua said -- an indication of how seriously the government takes the crash. China's airline industry, which was plagued by a rash of accidents in the 1990s, has spent millions on new planes and upgraded services in hopes of burnishing its reputation.

On April 15, Air China Flight CA129 from Beijing slammed into a forest-covered mountain in heavy rain and fog while preparing to land at Kimhae Airport near Busan, South Korea's second-largest city. South Korean officials have suggested pilot error was to blame in that crash.